Shadows
by Cafinatedangel13
Summary: Something like a sequel to Shattered Heart. Not really, but that's what I'm choosing to call it. Bella waits for Jacob.


**Shadows**

Admittedly, this started out as just a description essay I was using as distraction while I waited for, believe it or not, my dog to come back, but by the time I'd finished the first three lines, it had taken on a life its own. While it mostly describes the silent panic of one who has found a beloved pet in the middle of the road one morning, I discovered as I wrote it that it connects back to my oneshot, Shattered Heart.

Now, it connects back to it, only in the sense of Bella's new decision to be with Jacob, so in essence, it has nothing to do with it, which is why I'm not posing it as a second chapter. This is from Bella's perspective as she waits for Jacob to come back presumably after the end of Shattered Heart, but it could be about anybody waiting for anybody else. Go ahead and use your imagination; I don't mind.

For anyone who has cared (or is board) enough to actually bother reading it, my dog came back about the time I'd finished writing this.

Finally, I would like to dedicate this 'second chapter' to Can't-Buy-Love who asked for it. 

She stared out the icy window into the black night. No shadows obscured her vision; shadows depend on light, and the thick winter clouds blocked what would have been a hypnotic full moon. Instead all her eyes could make out was inky blackness, denying her even the shadowy figures in the distance through the misty glass as it fogged with each breath she released. Occasionally she could make out a shape or vague outline, a patch of something that seemed darker than the ink around it. Darker black on black.

Sadly the dim porch light did not play far into her favor, illuminating her immediate surroundings and creating the shadows the night had not. But beyond that tiny patch of light the blackness remained thick and undisturbed. Frustrated and disappointed, she reached over and, with a barely audible 'click', turned out the light.

Once again the blackness enveloped her. The eerie shadows she was so accustomed too were not there to comfort her as she gazed into the wall the night had become.

If anyone had stood with her as she stared unblinking through the slowly fogging glass, voiced or silent, the question would be the same. Why? Why stare oblivion in the eye? Even if there was something to see you would never be able to see it.

To be honest, even as she watched the night, the only real sight the occasional high-beams of late night drivers, she asked this herself. And to be honest still, she did not know. What she did know was that she had seen the world without light, and now he was out in it alone. And all she could think was what if he came back and she wasn't there?

A blacker than the surrounding blackness patch that she was certain was a tree branch caught the breeze just right, and although she knew it didn't matter, she flicked on the porch light just in case. But once again the dull glow produced only a small area of visibility and vague shadows that tricked her eyes. It didn't even put a dent in the darkness that engulfed her whole world.

For a moment, she considered leaving it on. Her hand frozen against the plastic switch, the patch identified as the tree branch she'd known it would be. But it lit up her tiny area and created the comforting shadows where before there had been nothing. And most of all, she wanted him to see it. To know that she was worried, that she was waiting. She was one of the shadows created by the light, not an outline of something, a smudge of blacker against black. She was _real_.

But she had been in a world without light. She had stumbled around looking for shadows instead of an outline of something she couldn't see. She had had to find her own way home. He would too.

But everything looked so different in the dark.

Breath fogging the slowly clearing glass, she watched her whole world disappear as she forced her fingers to flick off the porch light.

_Click._


End file.
